RETRO – If there is a game character who truly experienced both the peak of popularity and the depths of hell, it is Lara Croft: from a badass video game heroine she became a full-blown pop culture icon, but after the umpteenth sequel the series had sunk into total boredom. Tomb Raider: Legend really was Lara’s very last chance, but thankfully, with Crystal Dynamics, the sexy archaeologist ended up in very good hands… Tomb Raider: Legend is now 20 years old, and we updated this article to mark the occasion.

People often say that even the most gorgeous but empty-headed bombshell eventually becomes boring, and back then Lara Croft created something of a similar feeling in us. After the explosive success of the first game, the media seized on the sexy action heroine and turned her into a cover girl for magazines, a giant figure on U2 concert screens, and later a movie star in the form of Angelina Jolie.

Core Design had every opportunity to prove with each new sequel that Tomb Raider was more than an artificially inflated, overhyped phenomenon, but the studio instead rode the success of its own diva and gradually wore audiences down with increasingly unimaginative follow-ups, until eventually the very episode that was supposed to revolutionize the entire franchise became its lowest point.

The clumsy, buggy, sloppy, exhausting Angel of Darkness was a massive disappointment even for Miss Croft’s already shrinking fanbase, and it seemed that this chapter had sealed the fate of the entire series. Publisher Eidos, however, thought otherwise: it did not cast Lara as the sacrificial lamb, but Core Design.

In other words, it kicked the developers out so hard their feet barely touched the ground, and handed the Tomb Raider franchise to Crystal Dynamics, the studio that had already proven itself with the vampire-themed Legacy of Kain series. Since Lara’s reputation had been badly battered by the failures of Angel of Darkness and the second Tomb Raider movie, the brand-new developers had to give it everything they had to put Lara back on top.

Sexy and Likeable

You could criticize the Tomb Raider movies in many ways, but I think we can all agree – I certainly agree with myself, at least… – that Angelina Jolie was an excellent choice for the role, because she truly breathed life into what had originally been a somewhat empty character.

Video game Lara Croft, unfortunately, did not follow that trend: in Angel of Darkness they tried to turn her into some kind of tragic figure, but in the end the game itself became more tragic than Lara… Crystal Dynamics, with great instinct, returned to the roots, while somehow making the archaeologist far more interesting and lifelike than she had been in earlier installments. That is of course due in large part to the fact that Lara looks absolutely stunning.

Crystal managed to reshape her in such a way that, while she feels much more human – much more like a flesh-and-blood woman – she still preserves Miss Croft’s style and defining traits. Lara’s somewhat moon-faced and rough features from earlier games are finally truly beautiful in Legend; her eyes are full of life, her features refined and feminine.

Her facial expressions in the cutscenes deserve special mention too, the way she looks at her future victims with determination, suspicion, or charm. On paper that may sound trivial – except perhaps to hardcore Lara fans… – but this is exactly what finally makes the character feel alive and breathing, and what finally makes her more than just a big-breasted action heroine. Hmm… the big breasts – of course, that is not an entirely negligible factor either.
Some people criticized the earlier games for giving Lara unrealistically huge breasts, the kind that would make movement difficult, let alone the acrobatic feats she is famous for.

In the newest installment, Crystal tried not only to find the right proportions, but also to shape Miss Croft’s chest into something genuinely and realistically beautiful: gorgeous, apple-shaped, but without making us think of some silicone-loaded Pamela Anderson clone.

Croft of Persia

The developers did an equally first-rate job with Lara’s overall physique and animation as well. Compared to the Prince of Persia, Miss Croft cannot perform quite that many unbelievable acrobatic miracles – since the Tomb Raider setting and story lean more toward realism, it would not have been wise to stuff the game full of all sorts of impossible moves anyway – but what she can do, she does with striking flair and believable physicality.

Naturally, all the old trademark moves are present in the game: Lara can climb walls at the right spots, grab ropes and swing across anywhere from them, jump over chasms, and so on. Why am I spelling all this out? Well, because in the previous games none of it had been worked out quite perfectly: in the first five episodes, for example, the “grid system” (the game space was divided into squares) meant you always had to line up jumps with hair-splitting precision, while in Angel of Darkness she leapt in horribly annoying and unpredictable ways, so it was often impossible to judge where exactly Lara would land.

It may sound strange to put it this way, but for the first time in Tomb Raider, jumping across chasms and leaping to and from ledges and ropes is both precise and genuinely enjoyable – which is funny, because that is what we spend a good part of these games doing…
Beyond the familiar moves, of course, Lara also has a whole range of new tricks.

Most of them will feel familiar from Prince of Persia: we can cling to and swing across multiple levels of rocky protrusions on steep cave walls, spin and fly around poles jutting from the walls with the grace of a circus acrobat, and leap from one narrow pillar to another. Borrowing abilities like these from the Prince of Persia series is nothing new, of course, but to Crystal’s credit, they managed to implement them with the same hair-precise controls as Ubisoft’s classic.

Back to the Roots?

Of course, precise controls alone would still not be enough for a true “Tomb Raider” experience. Back in the day, what I loved most about Prince of Persia was how exploration of the environment paired so brilliantly with the puzzle sections. In the Tomb Raider games themselves, level design was often terribly dull, and the tasks were frequently little more than trudging through long corridors and across platforms while searching for switches, keys, and ways to open locked doors and gates, whereas in the Prince games we had to pay attention to every nook and cranny of the space to find the right tricky route forward.

Thankfully, the brand-new developers of Tomb Raider: Legend were guided by exactly this kind of creative mindset: on every level we really have to put our grey cells to work to find the way ahead, but at the same time we never get stuck because we failed to notice some badly placed narrow passage or got lost in overly repetitive, boring corridors. (To be honest – stone me if you want, but it is true – this was one of the reasons I grew tired of the first Tomb Raider games in the long run.)

But “creativity” is the key word in the puzzle sections as well: whereas earlier installments most often had us simply use previously found, variously mysterious keys in the proper place, here almost everything is usually located within a single room or chamber, and the real challenge lies in figuring out how and when to use the different environmental objects.

Another major strength of the puzzles is that they make full use of the possibilities in Tomb Raider: Legend‘s brand-new engine. Lara is not the only thing to receive new moves – the physics of the environment have changed completely as well. Objects finally move realistically, they have weight and a center of gravity, and many times we can only advance if we know how to exploit that.

On the very first Bolivian level, for example, at one point we have to catapult huge stone balls onto an upper ledge with the help of a seesaw-like mechanism, and thanks to the new, much more realistic engine, we are not just nudging them along a fixed route to a specific spot – we actually have to roll them precisely into place while taking their physics into account.

We also have to make frequent use of Lara’s Batman-like gadget, a wire-mounted grappling hook, and this too is often tied to the new physics in one way or another: on a London level, for instance, we have to stand on coffins floating in the water and yank ourselves back and forth against the current, while elsewhere we must pull down gigantic stone statues blocking our path.

Lara’s Skin in the Game

The graphics are impressive not only because of the realistic physics, but because they are simply beautiful as well. I already talked about Lara’s appearance, but Crystal’s artists put similar care into the Bolivian waterfalls, mountains and cave passages, the Peruvian catacombs, the Japanese luxury club, and the cityscape of Tokyo at night.

The environments make perfect use of the new engine’s technical possibilities: the water looks gorgeous, the light and shadow effects and bump mapping are superb, but the thing that will really make your jaw drop is the way Lara gets dirty from crawling around tombs and wet from swimming in rivers – her skin glistens damply, and if she has spent enough time in the water, it even drips off her.

The developers also made a serious effort to capture the character of each setting as fully as possible: in the dusty little Peruvian village, for instance, torn political posters cover the dirty walls; in the run-down district that serves as London’s equivalent of a rough inner-city neighborhood, the walls around the ruined museum are scrawled with graffiti; and on Tokyo’s ultramodern skyscrapers, giant advertisements loom overhead. For once, on none of the levels did I get the feeling I often had in the earlier Tomb Raider games – that the developers had just slapped something together in the current level editor and called it a day.

The only place that really got on my nerves was the obligatory snowy military base in Russia (incidentally, this was also where the otherwise dazzling graphics took a noticeable hit in quality), but you already know I am allergic to those anyway. While we are on the subject of negatives, it should also be mentioned that while every tiny line of Lara’s face is perfect, and the main supporting characters look fine too, the heads of the other NPCs are still rather generically “console-ish” and rough.

It is also pretty jarringly disappointing that the ropes somehow remained 2D, although I think that is simply the result of rushing, because I do not believe Crystal would have left the game like that intentionally. Another technical issue is the whole mess surrounding the “next-gen effects”: you can read about that in a separate box…

Action

Of course there is no Tomb Raider without action, and thankfully the developers revolutionized the game on that front as well. Whereas in earlier installments action – which mostly amounted to straightforward shooting – had only a secondary role, here it is a much more important part of the experience. During firefights Lara often comes up against what feels like an entire army of bad guys, and surviving those encounters depends on using the terrain to our advantage and making full use of Lara’s various tricks.

All the usual leaping, diving, and spinning while firing are there, of course, but if we get close enough to an enemy, we can also drive a forceful kick straight into the poor bastard’s stomach. Do not expect full-on Max Payne-style extras – that is not what this game is about – but the action is still miles more dynamic and exciting than in the rather limp earlier installments… The aiming system has changed too: it is no longer simply automatic, because we can now designate targets ourselves and switch between them.

If we have not selected anyone, the game automatically locks onto the nearest enemy. The whole thing feels much more intuitive and comfortable than before, and you will get used to it quickly.

Lost Parents, Treacherous Friends, King Arthur

I have not mentioned the story yet, though it is admittedly hard to write about it without spoiling the more important twists. In terms of sophistication, the story lands somewhere between the first five games and the sixth. The kind of twists typical of both the series and the movies are present again: we get to see little Lara once more (though thankfully we do not have to control her this time…), and both her mother and, through various hints, her father also play a role. Lara is once again helped by loyal friends, but there is also someone who betrays her: someone long thought dead turns up at the most unexpected moment in order to come after her life…

Naturally, everyone is after mysterious and immensely powerful artifacts, but in the end only Lara can obtain them. So that the nod to the Indiana Jones movies is not left out either, the legend of King Arthur also plays a major role in the game. All in all, the story is not bad, but it is hardly extraordinary – that is not why we love Tomb Raider: Legend. Fortunately, the somewhat cliched events are elevated by great cutscenes and witty dialogue. The voice acting is particularly strong as well: Keera Hawley is an excellent choice for Lara.

The Great Comeback

There was enormous pressure on Crystal Dynamics from both fans and publishers, because this really was Lara doll’s one last shot: if this game had also been a fiasco, Lara would have lost every last shred of credibility she still had. Thankfully, the developers of Legacy of Kain did exactly what they needed to do here as well: instead of getting lost in some epic but boring story-driven action-adventure monstrosity overloaded with unnecessary features – as Core Design tried with Angel of Darkness – they returned to the tomb-raiding roots.

They only touched the elements that were genuinely worth improving: the puzzle sections are far better developed and more interesting, the action is more exhilarating, and the graphics are miles more beautiful. If I wanted to sum up Tomb Raider: Legend briefly, I would say we got an excellent Prince of Persia clone, only set in a modern environment with Lara Croft in the lead role. And for me, that was more than enough for happiness.

-Bad Sector-[2006]

Publisher: Eidos Interactive

Developer: Crystal Dynamics

Genre: Action-adventure

Release: 2006